Top 10 Data Breaches of 2021

Does it ever occur to you where do companies store the data collected from you? Do you trust them enough with your personal information?

Well, all the Personal identity information collected from you gets stored in their cloud-based database. The companies try to secure your data from reaching third parties to avoid misuse. However, hackers and cybercriminals have learned their way out from this.

What is data breach?

With the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence, hackers try to retrieve your data from company software and misuse it for commercial or political purposes. It is called a data breach. 

The data breach meaning is simple- Somebody steals your information without your consent. It is a result of a cyberattack. You might have heard about Unacademy, an e-learning portal. But do you know that even its data got leaked?

Let us now understand how such data breaches can impact our lives through the examples of the top 10 data breaches of 2021.

Socialarks – Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Socialarks is a Chinese social media management firm that has its name in the data breaches list. 

In January 2021, 400GB data of 214 million people leaked because the database was left unprotected! The data consisted of the names, contact information, location, profile details, linked social media details, job information, and other information from all these platforms. So, next time you update your information on social media, be careful about the consequences of the data leaks.

Accellion

Accellion is a file transfer software that released four patches in January 2021 to fix the vulnerabilities in its FTA service. Unfortunately, while 17 customers were still installing the patch, a cyber attack led to a data breach. The hacker demanded ransom for the data to be left unexposed.

In the data breach 2021, many big organizations like the University of California, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were affected. 

Pixlr

Data of 1.9 million individuals got stolen when a hacker leaked the data from the photo-editing software, Pixlr.

It happened in January 2021, around the same time when 123RF was hacked. In this data breach, sensitive information like password hashes, the country of the user, email addresses, names, and information related to newspaper subscriptions was also exposed.

Bonobos

In January 2021, a hacker downloaded the customer’s data from the company’s cloud storage. Bonobos, a men’s clothing retailer, was breached of data of 7 million customers. The contact information of 1.8 million customers and partial credit card information of 3.5 million customers got exposed on a hacker forum for free.

U.S. Cellular

The hackers somehow convinced the employees of the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. to download malicious software in January 2021. 

Upon downloading, this software could access the CRM software of the company. With this, it got the data of 4.9 million customers comprising of their names, contact details, and bill statements. It makes this one of the biggest data breach examples.

MeetMindful

A data breach can result in the loss of some private details of the end-users. A similar case happened when the database of MeetMindful, a dating application, got leaked on a public hacker forum by ShinyHunters. In January 2021, the names, email addresses, location, birth dates, IP addresses, passwords, Facebook authentication tokens, etc. of nearly 2.28 million users leaked into the forum that left the users crashed. How would you react if your dating preferences leaked online?

Mimecast

Mimecast secures Microsoft365’s email connections through a cloud-based management system. The company issues a certificate for Sync and Recover, Endurance Monitor, and IEP for Microsoft365’s products. 

A skilled hacker breached these certificates on January 12, 2021. Approximately 10% of the users had to use a compromised connection. However, the company asked its users to reinstall a new secured certificate.

Reverb

The data breach news of Reverb leaked on April 24, 2021, in the Dark Web portal. The data included private details like names, residential addresses, email addresses, IP addresses, PayPal account details, contact numbers, and more of around 5.6 million users. These users submitted this information while purchasing musical instruments online which later got leaked on Dark Web.

ClearVoiceResearch.com

According to the source, the ClearVoice data leaked on a public forum in April 2021 and impacted approximately 15 million individuals.

ClearVoice is a famous market research survey company. It had a backup of the survey data of individuals from 2015, which got leaked. The data consisted of 15 million rows of unique email addresses and personal information like names, passwords, genders, and the responses of the 17 million participants. 

ClearVoice received an email about the same and notified its respondents immediately to change their passwords. To prevent misuse of respondents’ data, they secured the backup file ensuring that no such incident repeats.

Volkswagen

If you look at the top data breach examples, you will always find Volkswagen in the list. 

The data of the Volkswagen and Audi buyers came in the hand of a third party and was left unsecured in June 2021. It later got hacked. This data was between August 2019 and May 2021. 

Due to this data breach, approximately 90,000 customers’ driver’s license numbers got leaked with their personal details. However, only the contact details and vehicle numbers of other customers were exposed.

Final words

A data breach is a threat and can lead you into serious trouble. It is always advisable to secure your confidential documents with passwords. What is more important is to keep changing these passwords in regular intervals to avoid loss of information. As an individual, be careful of the data you provide and don’t let every platform access your information. 

As a company, you must be alert that data breach by employees doesn’t take place. Every customer is important, and securing their data is your responsibility.